My Blog

Offering Rideshare in Cargo Van from LA to BRC - Arriving 8/23

Alicia (Aylish) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:46:55 GMT

If you have permission to get in the gate early, consider riding up with me on Saturday, August 23. I have to be there for training on Sunday morning, so I won't be stopping in Reno. The year we got a flat tire before we reached Lancaster AND then cracked the engine block disabling our first van AND then had to find a vehicle to rent in the middle of the desert on a Sunday AND then had to spend the night in a creepy motel, I stayed calm and optimistic the entire time. I'm a very drama-free roadtrip companion. I'll be driving a standard-sized cargo van and won't be bringing too much gear. I'll return to LA on the morning of Tuesday, 9/2--again driving straight through with no long stops. If this option sounds good to you, let's talk.

Update on Psilocybin Study - Phase I Nearly Complete

Alicia (Aylish) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 06:30:58 GMT

This little announcement if for everyone who has been following the progress of the Cancer Anxiety study with psilocybin that began at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in 2004. The news is good. We treated the final participant in May, and data analysis is in progress. The team plans to publish results later this year. As the study's coordinator, I'm frequently asked what a therapuetic experience in a hospital setting is like for the volunteers. I can report that we haven't had any freak outs or even bad trips. We've also heard many positive accounts of a wide range of benefits. For the official results, we'll have to see what the data tells us in the coming weeks. In the meantime, if you'd like to know more, you can read this article from the June issue of "Discover" magazine for an overview of the recent advances in psychedelic medicine. Two of our participants are quoted along with Dr. Charles Grob, the principal investigator. http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jun/16-could-an-acid-trip-cure-your-ocd/article_view?b_start:int=3&-C= Other sources of information on this study can be found in the Psychedelic Salon podcasts: 1) Dr. Charlie Grob ("Cancer Anxiety Study Tests Psilocybin," 2005): http://www.matrixmasters.net/blogs/?p=189 2) Dr. Preet Chopra ("Status of Psilocybin Study at Harbor-UCLA" @ Burning Man 2006): http://www.matrixmasters.net/blogs/?cat=100 3) Alicia Danforth ("Buidling a Model for Sustainable Psychedelic Therapy" @ Burning Man 2007): http://www.matrixmasters.net/blogs/?p=266 Shortly, we will begin drafting the protocol for the next phase of the study. If you know of anyone with advanced cancer who might like to particpate, our office number is: 310-222-3175. Also, if you would like to make a financial contribution in support of the next round, you can donate through our sponsor organization's Web site: www.heffter.org (This is privately funded research. We receive no government or corporate funding, but that shouldn't surprise anyone!) Thanks to all who have supported this effort!

The sweetest thing I've ever seen

Alicia (Aylish) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:18:41 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He7Ge7Sogrk Someone sent this video to me at work, and I got all choked up. If this is for real, I'm even more freaked out now by how people treat elephants. I'm reminded of walking by the ivory shops that were crammed from floor to ceiling with carved tusks when I lived in Hong Kong. If anyone knows more about elephant artists, I would love to hear about it. Is this a hoax? Are they meticulously trained to recreate certain images, or do they spontaneously express themselves with varying degrees of talent, just like humans? I found this explanation at www.elephantartgallery.com, but I want to know more!: "Although elephants are very intelligent and naturally creative, painting with their trunks is not an activity that any have been found to perform in the wild. Therefore all the artists first have to go to school to learn how to paint. Elephant painting began in 1998 when the conceptual art partnership of Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid taught selected elephants at the TECC to paint. Elephants had done this before in over 20 zoos and circuses around the world, but this was the first time in Thailand and they were the first to bring this activity to prominent media attention. The mahouts who have had the most experience in elephant painting now perform all the teaching themselves. It takes only one day to discover if the elephant has real interest in the activity and any aptitude at art. Once the most promising students have been selected, they then continue to be taught for up to a week before they are considered ready to make a living from it. They are taught by first showing them how to hold the paintbrush. While some curl the trunk around the brush instinctively, the preferred method at the Center is to hold the brush in the ‘nostril’ at the end of the trunk, which gives the artist greater range of movement for the brushstrokes. For this purpose the paintbrush is modified so as to be the right length and thickness to hold easily. Next they are introduced to the easel and taught how close to stand to it so that they can extend their trunk comfortably. Finally they are guided by the mahout to apply the brush to the paper. Some artists take to this quicker than others, but all of them need time and encouragement to learn how to apply the paint within the confines of the paper, to know when the paint has dried up and to develop a style of brushstroke that suits them. During the training the artist’s natural instinctive style becomes evident. No two elephant artists have the same style and just like human artists, their style develops and matures over time. It is quite unnecessary to force the elephant to learn how to paint. Those that do not seem to enjoy the activity are introduced to other activities. Today there are 14 elephant artists at the Center and all of them thoroughly enjoy painting."

The Play in the Playa - Insights from "The Joyous Cosmology"

Alicia (Aylish) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:36:52 GMT

Nothing inspired me to submit a blog entry until I came across this passage in the epilogue to The Joyous Cosmology, an essay on the "adventures in the chemistry of consciousness" by Alan Watts. Without analyzing the magic out of it, I was trying to understand why Burning Man means so much to me...why I make sacrifices to participate when it seems as if the energy might be better spent elsewhere. I get it now, and I would like to pass along these insights from Watts to you. *** "...No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of this life is rigid and brittle. The manners and mores of Western civilization force this perpetual sanity upon us to an extreme degree, for there is no accepted corner in our lives for the art of pure nonsense. Our play is never real play because it is almost invariably rationalized; we do it on the pretext that it is good for us, enabling us to go back to work refreshed. There is no protected situation in which we can really let ourselves go. Day in and day out we must tick obediently like clocks, and "strange thoughts" frighten us so much that we rush to the nearest head-doctor. Our difficulty is that we have perverted the Sabbath into a day for laying on rationality and listening to sermons instead of letting off steam. If our sanity is to be strong and flexible, there must be occasional periods for the expression of completely spontaneous movement -- for dancing, singing, howling, babbling, jumping, groaning, wailing -- in short, for following any motion to which the organism as a whole seems to be inclined. It is by no means impossible to set up physical and moral boundaries within which this freedom of action is expressible -- sensible contexts in which nonsense may have its way. Those who provide for this essential irrationality will never become stuffy or dull, and, what is far more important, they will be opening up the channels through which the formative and inteilligent spontaneity of the organism can at last flow into consciousness... The function of such intervals for nonsense is not merely to be an outlet for pent-up emotion or unused psychic energy, but to set in motion a mode of spontaneous action which, though at first appearing as nonsense, can eventually express itself in intelligible forms." -- Alan Watts, 1962